Back in 2008, I ended a day of storm chasing by crossing the Missouri River into South Dakota and passed over the Meridian Bridge. I had been there before, but on May 25, 2008, I had time to stop and take some photos.

The bridge is a double-decker draw bridge, with the northbound and southbound lanes stacked on top of one another.

It really is a beautiful bridge. If you are ever in the area, you should check it out. While I was there, a gentleman near the bridge said that it was being converted to pedestrian traffic and was being restored. I haven’t found any information on the restoration, but it is nice to think that this bridge will be preserved.

The mechanism for lifting the bridge was removed in 1984, but the large pulleys are still present on the bridge.

On the South Dakota side, there was a tasteful park that had a playground, jogging trail and a few signs with descriptions of the life on the river throughout history.

The jogging trail crossed under the bridge, and so I took a few photos from there.

Junkyards are neat. It is unfortunate that people have car accidents, and it is unfortunate that people are hurt or killed in car accidents. However, the process of recycling cars is really interesting.

This junkyard was south of Denver, and seemed to specialize in newer vehicles. These cars are parted out first, but vehicles of all types are brought to this junkyard.

This particular facility stacks cars on racks to part them out. You can see them in the top of this image.

Some of the cars in this facility were not badly damaged, from what I could see from the hill nearby. For instance, this Dodge Caravan has a better front fender than the one on my Dodge Caravan, and it’s even the same color.

Other vehicles had burned badly. I can’t imagine what parts are still of value on a few of these cars.

It also served as storage for a more somber reminder to drive safely. There was a Honda, clearly cut open by the Jaws of Life, on a trailer with several posters talking about the incident. These are always sad to see.

Other facilities have crushers, and/or shredders. Sometimes they crush the cars and then run them through the shredders. The shredder has a series of large hammers that pull the sheet metal apart. Believe it or not, the shredder can cause the ductile iron used in the engine block shatters in brittle fashion. Some of the better shredders can separate ferrous and nonferrous metals, as well as non-metallic pieces, which drop from separate chutes.

Depending on the situation, you take the pressed cars or the shredded pieces and move them by truck or rail to a steel mill to be melted down.

You may be wondering why I am posting this; perhaps you know this already. The reason I post this is that today’s commonplace is tomorrow’s archeology, so having a few photos of a modern junkyard may be something someone wants to see later on.

I hope you enjoyed this post. I have more posts coming that I think you’ll like!